Chapter Summaries

Chen Yi met Empress Dowager An, who appointed him acting director of the Eastern Depot, warned him about the Ding'an faction, and secretly plotted to humiliate him as revenge against his supposed Chen clan. After drinking the poisoned medicine again, Chen Yi left for the Eastern Depot, where Wang Gu and other officers resented his appointment.

• Empress Dowager An questioned Chen Yi about taking a maidservant as his concubine, told him to burn the memorial, and said she had other arrangements for his wife.
• After Chen Yi left, Empress Dowager An revealed her hatred of his supposed clan and planned to arrange a marriage between him and the Chen lineage's only daughter to disgrace them.
• Empress Dowager An learned that the Do Not Use Tower had spread rumors linking Xue Youge to the Demonic Cult and ordered the Nameless Old Matron to warn them and remove some spies.
• Empress Dowager An ordered attendants to wash the place where Chen Yi had stood spotlessly clean.
• Chen Yi drank the same poisonous decoction in the Medicinal Cuisine Room and endured its burning effects before leaving.
• At the Eastern Depot Drill Ground, Wang Gu and other chief constables complained that Chen Yi would take charge, and Wang Gu blamed the Lin faction for his appointment.

Chen Yi promised the injured Yin Tingxue books, then discussed the approaching Prayer Daoist Grounds with Min Ming after she confirmed the Do Not Use Tower would cooperate. Min Ming offered herself to protect Min Ning, but just as she began to undress in Chen Yi’s room, a cry announced that a villain from the Do Not Use Tower had appeared.

• Chen Yi found Yin Tingxue restless and promised to buy her essays and novels to read.
• Chen Yi considered how to raise his strength before entering the Prayer Daoist Grounds.
• Min Ming told Chen Yi that the Do Not Use Tower had agreed to cooperate with him.
• Min Ming offered to serve Chen Yi in exchange for a promise to spare Min Ning, and Chen Yi told her she would have to earn it.
• Min Ming entered Chen Yi’s room, saw Yin Tingxue asleep, and began removing her clothes while concealing poison in her body.
• A startled cry announced that a villain from the Do Not Use Tower was outside Donghua Gate.

Chen Yi hid Min Ming from the Nameless Old Matron while the Magpie Pavilion attacked the Do Not Use Tower outside Donghua Gate. After the danger passed, Min Ming remembered she had used Three Yang Qi-Dispersing Paste, and Chen Yi demanded to know where she had applied it.

• Chen Yi and Min Ming saw the Magpie Pavilion surrounding the Do Not Use Tower, and Granny Qingmei ordered her people to split up and escape.
• Min Ming feared the Magpie spies would discover she was a Do Not Use Tower spy, so Chen Yi hid her in the bedroom as the Nameless Old Matron entered to investigate.
• The Nameless Old Matron tested Min Ming for martial training, found no sign she was an outlaw, and left after warning Chen Yi about the danger to the palace.
• Min Ming recalled the Three Yang Qi-Dispersing Paste and told Chen Yi she had applied the poison, but he pressed her to reveal where.

After discovering Min Ming's role in poisoning him, Chen Yi spared her after Yin Tingxue claimed she was ill, then advanced his Cangshan Fist and visited the Eastern Depot. Wang Gu greeted him with suspiciously eager courtesy.

• Chen Yi confronted Min Ming about poisoning him, but relented after Yin Tingxue used her illness as a reason to protect her; he gave Min Ming a brief kiss and told her to rest.
• Chen Yi invested forty-nine years of true qi in the Cangshan Fist and reached its beginner stage, which he believed raised him to the sixth grade.
• Chen Yi prepared lunch for Yin Tingxue, then went to the Eastern Depot to introduce himself to its agents.
• Wang Gu stopped striking a wooden post, smiled at Chen Yi, and offered to show him around the Eastern Depot, prompting Chen Yi to suspect his attentiveness.

Chen Yi investigated an old report of an Infant Tower and discovered that Wang Gu and the Ding'an faction had allowed it to exist as a means of undermining the Lin faction. Surrounded by Embroidered Uniform Guards who demanded he dismount, Chen Yi drew his saber and prepared to act according to his own principles.

• Chen Yi arrived at the Eastern Depot as Acting Depot Lord, and Wang Gu gave him an old case file about a privately built Infant Tower.
• Chen Yi ordered Wang Gu to take him to the village and said those responsible should be escorted to the capital under Great Yu Law.
• At the village, Wang Gu and fourteen Embroidered Uniform Guards surrounded Chen Yi and demanded that he dismount.
• Chen Yi questioned why the tower had been allowed to stand for years, and Wang Gu admitted the Ding'an faction had tolerated such abuses to weaken the Lin faction.
• Chen Yi drew his Embroidered Spring Saber while remaining mounted, overcome by anger at the faction's justifications.

Chen Yi defeated Wang Gu and the Eastern Depot guards after they attacked him at the Infant Tower, then ordered the surviving agents to rescue the children and arrest those responsible. He left Wang Gu alive but maimed, warning him to tell Prince Jing and the Ding'an faction what had happened.

• Chen Yi killed several of Wang Gu's fourteen guards in battle, shrugging off their attacks before knocking Wang Gu unconscious with a powerful punch.
• When Min Ning arrived with Eastern Depot Agents, Chen Yi stood over the wounded Wang Gu and cut off his left arm while sparing his life.
• Chen Yi told Wang Gu to report the encounter to Prince Jing and the Ding'an faction, declaring that he would kill and handle what the Eastern Depot would not.
• Chen Yi ordered Min Ning to collect the Eastern Depot dead and send Wang Gu back to Capital City, then explained that Wang Gu's men had attacked first and enabled the Infant Tower's creation.
• Chen Yi commanded the agents to remove every child from the tower and take them to the Foundling Hall, and to arrest everyone who had helped build it.

After surviving a deadly ambush by the Ding'an faction, Chen Yi returned to the Capital City and gave Min Ning the Cangshan Fist manual, though she refused it without a trade. At home, he brought books and food to Yin Tingxue, who told him about a dream involving Zhou Yitang, and promised not to bully her while she recovered.

• Chen Yi escorted the surviving Embroidered Uniform Guards, rescued babies, and villagers toward the Capital City, worrying that the Ding'an faction might attack him again.
• Min Ning gave Chen Yi her cape, and he teased her before offering her the Cangshan Fist manual as a reward for caring about him.
• Min Ning refused the manual because she could not repay him, so Chen Yi put it away and decided to make other plans.
• Chen Yi bought books and food for Yin Tingxue, then found her awake in the hall when he returned home.
• Yin Tingxue described a dream about a one-armed woman who wanted to take her away, and Chen Yi identified the woman as Zhou Yitang.
• Chen Yi served Yin Tingxue her favorite foods and told her to focus on recovering, promising not to bully her for now.

Prince Jing’s faction planned to kill Chen Yi during the Prayer Daoist Grounds, but Yin Weiying intervened to protect Min Ning. After taking charge of the Eastern Depot, Chen Yi began gathering records on Prince Jing’s residence and planned to ensnare both the Lin and Ding'an factions.

• Elder Xu and Huang Qing rebuked Prince Jing for the failed attempt on Chen Yi and proposed killing him during the Prayer Daoist Grounds.
• Yin Weiying entered the meeting, revealed her interest in Min Ning, and persuaded Prince Jing to spare Min Ning while allowing her to target Chen Yi.
• Min Ning found the Cangshan Fist and Chen Yi’s note returning it, then headed to the Eastern Depot with conflicted thoughts about him.
• Yin Tingxue considered asking Chen Yi to help her return to Silver Terrace Temple but resisted the idea of begging him.
• Chen Yi formally assumed the position of Depot Lord and ordered the clerks to find records connected to Prince Jing’s residence.
• Chen Yi resolved to use the coming Prayer Daoist Grounds to trap both the Lin faction and the Ding'an faction.

Chen Yi ordered an investigation into Prince Jing's residence to pressure the Ding'an faction, then Min Ning kissed him as repayment and to distract him from her sister. A pigeon brought word that Min Ming was in danger at the Hundred Flowers Tower, where Yin Weiying had already defeated the hidden fighters and asked Min Ming to play the Guangling Melody.

• Chen Yi rejected the Recorder's advice to avoid antagonizing the Ding'an faction and ordered the Recorders to gather files concerning Prince Jing's residence.
• Min Ning confronted Chen Yi, kissed him to repay him for returning her Fist Manual, and admitted she wanted to protect Min Ming from his advances.
• A message carried by a pigeon warned that Min Ming was in danger at the Hundred Flowers Tower.
• At the Hundred Flowers Tower, Min Ming played the zither while Yin Weiying prepared tea beside two lifeless paper effigies.
• Min Ming asked Yin Weiying why she had come, and Yin Weiying told her to keep playing and asked whether she knew the Guangling Melody.

At Hundred Flowers Tower, Yin Weiying offered to take Min Ning up the mountain to cultivate and showed Chen Yi the vast gulf between mortal and immortal lifespans. Her lesson in severing worldly attachments nearly drew him away from the mortal world, but he could not forget Yin Tingxue’s declaration that she was his concubine.

• Chen Yi entered Hundred Flowers Tower and met Yin Weiying, who revealed that she had come for Min Moon Pond and offered to take her up the mountain to cultivate.
• Speaking as Min Ning, Chen Yi refused Yin Weiying’s offer, saying she could not abandon her elder sister or her duty to restore the Min Household.
• Yin Weiying showed Chen Yi that an eternal lamp could still go out and explained how mortals’ brief lives compared with the long spans of immortal existence.
• Yin Weiying brought Chen Yi to Silver Terrace Temple and taught that cultivating longevity required severing worldly ties and forgetting emotion.
• Yin Weiying led Chen Yi above the Capital City as centuries passed, and he began to feel that all worldly attachments were insignificant.
• As Chen Yi was about to let go of his remaining desires, he remembered Yin Tingxue’s pledge to be his concubine and realized he could not abandon her.

Chen Yi rejected Yin Weiying’s path of severing mortal ties, arguing that cultivation should make someone an immortal rather than a stone. As he escorted her from the Hundred Flowers Tower, the city plunged into unnatural darkness three days before Demon-Quelling Day, and Yin Weiying exposed a talisman-selling Daoist as a fiend.

• Chen Yi challenged Yin Weiying’s belief that supreme oblivion of emotion was the path to immortality, and she dismissed his argument as Mohist heterodoxy.
• Yin Weiying stored away her tea things, and Chen Yi escorted her from the Hundred Flowers Tower with a lantern.
• The sky abruptly darkened, yin baleful energy spread, and the streets fell silent, prompting Chen Yi to wonder why Demon-Quelling Day had arrived early.
• Chen Yi and Yin Weiying encountered Min Ning, whom Chen Yi introduced under the identity and title of Chen Yi, courtesy name Chen Zunming.
• A Daoist selling talismans tried to charge an old woman triple for his last one, and Yin Weiying called him a fiend and demanded that he reveal his true form.

During the Day of Quelling Bandits and Exorcising Demons, Chen Yi and Yin Weiying encountered several ghosts while escorting Min Ning through the darkened capital. They fled from a canal demon and a ghost general, but in a dead-end alley they came face-to-face with a dying Asura as Chen Yi smiled, knowing its identity from the walkthrough.

• Yin Weiying exposed and destroyed a dung-selling ghost whose talismans were made of manure.
• Chen Yi, Yin Weiying, and Min Ning saw the Jealous Wife Ford Deity drown men at the canal and hurried away.
• Chen Yi identified a Confucian scholar as a ghost, causing it to melt into black water.
• The group spotted a ghost general leading hopping corpses and fled into an alley.
• They encountered a dying Asura whose fall into the ghost path could make it a Ghost King, while Chen Yi smiled because he had read the walkthrough.

Chen Yi used his knowledge of the game’s Buddhist lore to free a dying Asura from its suffering and claimed the Red-Gold Sarira it left behind. Yin Weiying mistook his insight for the Heavenly Eye and offered to make him her dao companion, but Chen Yi revealed that his name was not Min Yuechi.

• Chen Yi approached the declining Asura despite Yin Weiying’s attempts to stop him, then explained that its fear of death and attachment to life were avidya.
• The Asura seized Chen Yi and demanded to know how to escape suffering, so Chen Yi told it about Indra taking refuge in the Three Refuges and challenged it to consider whether Chen Yi himself could be a Buddha ferrying it across.
• The Asura’s grip loosened as Buddhist light arose, and it vanished, leaving a Red-Gold Sarira that Chen Yi collected.
• Yin Weiying concluded that Chen Yi possessed the Heavenly Eye and reconsidered her earlier contempt for him, believing he might be her destined opportunity.
• Yin Weiying asked Min Yuechi to become her dao companion, and Chen Yi corrected her by revealing that his name was Chen Yi.

Chen Yi revealed his identity to Yin Weiying, then forced her to admit that Prince Jing's Manor planned to kill him on Demon-Quelling Day. As Chen Yi sensed a new threat approaching, Huang Liuqing of the White Willow Sect arrived in the alley.

• Chen Yi revealed that he was Thousand Household Chen Yi, and Min Ning disclosed her identity to Yin Weiying.
• Yin Weiying lost her composure, cursed Chen Yi, and attacked him with her peachwood sword before Min Ning disarmed her.
• Chen Yi pressured Yin Weiying for information, and she revealed that Prince Jing's Manor intended to kill him on Demon-Quelling Day.
• Chen Yi sensed murderous intent and saw Huang Liuqing, a True Disciple of the White Willow Sect, approaching with a saber and lantern.

Chen Yi faced Huang Liuqing, a fifth-grade martial artist sent by Prince Jing to kill him, and was badly outmatched in their saber duel. He escaped by pretending to reveal a final move and fleeing, leaving Huang Liuqing alone in the alley.

• Chen Yi sent Min Ning and Yin Weiying away before confronting Huang Liuqing, who said Prince Jing had ordered him to kill Chen Yi.
• Huang Liuqing and Chen Yi drew their sabers and fought in the alley, with Huang Liuqing's superior realm and powerful White Willow Sect technique giving him the advantage.
• Huang Liuqing wounded Chen Yi's hand and notched the Embroidered Spring Saber, while Chen Yi admitted he had one final move.
• Chen Yi hurled his scabbard at Huang Liuqing, spun around, and fled the alley as Huang Liuqing struck the scabbard and stared after him.

Chen Yi escaped Huang Liuqing and reunited with Min Ning and Yin Weiying at the Western Depot, where he forced Yin Weiying to surrender an alchemy manual. Min Ning offered to teach Chen Yi a saber move and make him her disciple, but he refused and revealed that Zhou Yitang was his only master.

• Empress An learned that Demon-Quelling Day had arrived unexpectedly and ordered the Directorate of Celestial Observations and both Depots to investigate.
• Chen Yi escaped Huang Liuqing and reached the Western Depot, where Min Ning and Yin Weiying had taken shelter.
• Chen Yi provoked Yin Weiying, demanded compensation, and took her Purple Medicine Pill Compendium before she left.
• Min Ning gave Chen Yi wound medicine and offered to teach him a newly comprehended saber move so they could investigate her grandfather's death together.
• Min Ning proposed that Chen Yi become her disciple, but Chen Yi said Zhou Yitang was his only master and described himself as a disciple who had defied his master and betrayed his lineage.

Chen Yi took Yin Tingxue to Thousand Lamps Temple, where she mourned Silver Terrace Temple’s decline, while Min Ning confronted Li the Rakshasa and demonstrated her Wind- and Rain-Scattering Saber. The chapter ended with Min Ning walking away after killing him with a single strike.

• Chen Yi agreed to take Yin Tingxue to Thousand Lamps Temple and received an empress dowager’s decree to investigate Demon-Quelling Day.
• Chen Yi reviewed files about Prince Jing’s Manor and found that Jade Elegance Estate was suspected of illegally trafficking Five-Stone Powder.
• Chen Yi, Yin Tingxue, and Min Ning went to Thousand Lamps Temple, where Yin Tingxue reflected on Silver Terrace Temple’s decline.
• Min Ning asked Chen Yi again to learn her saber strike, then drank wine and confronted Li the Rakshasa after he drew his saber in public.
• Min Ning killed Li the Rakshasa with one strike, cleaving through him and the falling rain, then walked away drinking wine.

Chen Yi learned that an Extraterrestrial Demon had caused evil thoughts and yin baleful intent to surge in the Capital City, bringing Demon-Quelling Day early. Zhou Yitang told Empress An that Extraterrestrial Demons came from beyond the Three Realms, while Lu Ying explained that the term referred to demons from foreign traditions.

• Min Ning agreed to teach Chen Yi her saber technique if he promised not to touch her older sister for a year, and Chen Yi agreed to visit Thousand Lamps Temple after the crowds thinned.
• Chen Yi took Yin Tingxue through Thousand Lamps Temple and met Feiyuan True Person, who explained the history of Demon-Quelling Day and said evil thoughts gathered into ghosts.
• Feiyuan True Person said an Extraterrestrial Demon was behind the unusually strong evil thoughts and yin baleful intent in the Capital City.
• Zhou Yitang told Empress An that Extraterrestrial Demons came from beyond the Three Realms, and Lu Ying explained that the name collectively described demons such as Yama Raja, Asura, and Garuda.

Chen Yi mastered Min Ning’s Wind- and Rain-Scattering Saber in an instant, astonishing her, before hearing how her family was destroyed after her grandfather’s role in the Chancellor Case. He suggested that the Suppress Bandits and Exorcise Demons Blessing Ritual might let them summon her grandfather’s soul and learn the truth.

• A message from the Do Not Use Tower asked Chen Yi to eliminate demons and ghosts in Huai River Village, and Min Ning taught him her saber strike.
• Chen Yi spent twenty years of true qi to master the Wind- and Rain-Scattering Saber, then demonstrated a version far beyond Min Ning’s own.
• Min Ning explained that her grandfather was implicated in the Chancellor Case after returning from a search for divine elixirs, and that her parents later died while pursuing the truth.
• Chen Yi and Min Ning discussed whether the late emperor or Grand Secretary Lin had been involved in her grandfather’s execution.
• Chen Yi pointed out that the ritual blurred the boundary between humans and ghosts and suggested they summon Min Ning’s grandfather’s soul.

Chen Yi persuaded Min Ning to agree to summon his grandfather Min He’s soul, then took him to Min He’s grave near Huai River Village. There, Chen Yi admitted he could not perform the ritual himself, but said someone else could as Shangqing Dao Daoists arrived.

• Chen Yi appealed to Min Ning’s memories of Min He and promised to share the burden, and Min Ning finally agreed to the soul-summoning.
• Chen Yi read a notice about demons in Huai River Village and suspected Grand Secretary Lin wanted a ghost general exterminated for merit.
• Chen Yi and Min Ning rode to Huai River Village, where they heard that the ghost general had killed previous exorcists and villagers.
• Min Ning found Min He’s overgrown grave and solemnly bowed before giving Chen Yi permission to proceed.
• Chen Yi revealed that he did not know how to summon a soul but said someone else did, as a group of Shangqing Dao Daoists approached.